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Plot Summary
ACT I ISSUE ONE: ARROGANT BEGINNINGS Smith Sterling, a normal engineer from Long Beach, has been obsessed for some time with finding a cure for death. To that end, he has got into contact with Whisper, a neutral facillitator of communication between various gangs and super villains in Los Angeles. Through Whisper, he has arranged to get some vital materials for his Ecto-Reader. Though the initial testing is a bit rocky, he soon invents the means to speak with ghosts and build robots. Dubbing himself the Iron Master, he uses these "terminators" to raid a Scientology museum, which wins him the initial respect of John Jameson of the Daily Courier, a local newspaper/site (mostly a website these days) that runs the article headlined "The Iron Master: Villain or Vigilante?" The raid is overshadowed in news by a bombing in Avalon, a small town on Catalina Island just south of the city. The Iron Master's hideout is also situated on this island, so he quickly sets about subduing the two sets before they can bring down unwanted police attention or just get him caught in the crossfire on his way to and from his lair. It's bad enough that they're building the new super prison, the Catalina Towers, out there (some wings of which are already functional, as the Artificer is already being held inside). During his scheming, the Iron Master is interrupted when his security systems warn him of Julio Pedone, who has entered the lair being chased by a number of thugs from the Moretti Outfit, one of two sets on the island. After subduing them all, he learns that Julio was getting older and wasn't considered fit for leadership, so the Family assigned him to the Moretti Outfit, their rejects bin. Seeing the writing on the wall and feeling betrayed that decades of loyalty were apparently unnoticed, Julio tried to switch sides to Chimera. When the Moretti Outfit found out, they tried to kill him. The Iron Master recruits Julio, and with his knowledge of the Moretti Outfit and their enemies, the Avalon Goblins, he's able to run a series of false flag attacks with disguised terminators that set the two at war with one another. The Iron Master makes plans for the mainland, using his ghosts and a terminator with a Halloween mask bolted to its face to impersonate an avatar of Santa Muerte, the Mexican Saint Death, who is worshipped at least in name by every member of the Santos Espada. The Santos are originally skeptical, but soon become convinced when the bot is able to put them into contact with their dead comrades via the Iron Master's Ecto-Reader, which has been modified to a cell phone version. Though the Iron Master does not yet control the Santos Espada, he has won their respect and gotten a foothold in their organization. He also sends his ghosts to spy on the mainland in general, and discovers that EdenTech, a company working on some sort of urban warfare project for the government (presumably the Pentagon), has used tech to ghost-proof all the important parts of their building, and that Chimera installations in Long Beach are likewise shielded. Similarly, the Family has some sort of mystical protection against ghosts. Back on Catalina, the war goes poorly for the Avalon Goblins, and the Iron Master's ghosts, whom he has convinced to begin working as his spies largely for lack of anything better to do now that they're dead, inform him that several of them are planning on betraying Rica Rivera, who started the war (she claims members of the Moretti Outfit tried to mug her on her own turf, but all that's known for sure is that she killed them), handing her over to the Moretti's as a peace offering. The Iron Master warned her, but she was suspicious, so he instead had her followed by his terminators. When the exchange took place, Rica tried to fight her way out but would no doubt have been badly outgunned if the terminators had not arrived to save her. Rica and the terminators quickly got rid of the traitorous goblins and solidified the Avalon Goblins under the Iron Master's control, before using Julio's inside knowledge of the Moretti Outfit to get rid of them, as well. Now that he'd seized control of Catalina Island, the Iron Master began making plans to attack the Nine Rollers on the mainland and seize control of Palos Verdes. The gang founded on the rubble of the Moretti's and the Goblins is called the Iron Guard or often the Iron Legion (technically the Iron Legion was the name of the first set, not the entire gang, but they are often used interchangeably). ISSUE TWO: SOUND AND FURY The Iron Master learns that super hero team Amp and Kestrel have begun investigating the work of Santa Muerte in Eastside, hoping to expose a super villain they are quite certain is not divine in origin and shut "Santa Muerte" down before she can turn the Santos Espada into a threat that can rival Chimera or the Family. In response, the Iron Master sends his ghosts to stalk them and is quickly able to discover their identities. Amp is Kurt Dobek, a high school teacher, and Amp is Sofia Span, a high school sophomore at a different school. The Iron Master sends anonymous messages threatening to reveal their secret identities if they continue heroing, and Amp and Kestrel fall silent, but only temporarily. Because the ghosts are volunteers, they do not have a perfect and constant surveillance of Amp and Kestrel. They hatch a plan with their superfriend Behemoth to ambush Santa Muerte, who they've guessed is likely the source of the anonymous message since it came so soon after they began investigating her. Behemoth challenges Santa Muerte to a fight, claiming he'll prove she's not divine. At the battle, Amp and Kestrel arrive and ambush the terminators who attack Behemoth. Behemoth sorts through innumerable devices, from magical charms to stun grenades, until he finds hacker-cylinders that he attaches to a grappled terminator (apparently the heroes didn't know what sort of device they'd need to capture Santa Muerte's minions, so they brought everything). The Iron Master fortunately had the foresight to install self-destruct systems and destroys his terminators before they can be hacked. Seeing that "Santa Muerte's avatar" is just a machine, the plot to seize control of the Santos Espada falls apart completely. Amp and Kestrel remain underground, and the Iron Master resolves to turn Kestrel to his side. ISSUE THREE: SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT Resolving to avoid the clumsy mistakes of his blackmailing scheme, the Iron Master sets about having Julio Pedone subvert the Nine Rollers' more powerful sets, which are shielding the weaker and extremely profitable Dream Boy Nine Rollers and Easy Nines. These he'll bribe to his side and, with the Nine Rollers crippled in terms of men and money, launch a blitz to seize Palos Verdes. While Julio and, later, Rica Rivera begin winning over the Steel Killer Nine Rollers, the Iron Master creates an android named Steve who appears as a perfect replica of a human and sends him to Sofia's school, slowly winning her trust. Because his brain is a computer, he is able to perform alarmingly well in almost all of his classes, and becomes Sofia's tutor, learning more about her history. She used to get As and Bs, was reasonably popular, and was one of the school's athletes. At around the same time she took up her wings as Kestrel (apparently stolen from EdenTech, where her father works), her grades and social life plummeted, and she became less involved in sports until she finally dropped out altogether. Every few months she gets in a fight with bullies picking on her or someone else. Her father knows she is Kestrel and helped her avoid being caught by EdenTech security when she robbed the labs for her suit, but Sofia does not know he knows and thinks she got away with it on her own. Amp knows that Doctor Span knows, however, and the two are in contact. Doctor Span is concerned for his daughter's well-being but does not want to interfere with something she is clearly so passionately dedicated to. As the city becomes more dangerous, however, Amp agrees to force Sofia to retire once they finish their fight with the super villain behind the Santa Muerte plot, whose identity is still unknown to them. While Steve gets closer to Sofia, the Iron Master sows seeds of discord between the Goblin Gang and the Family on the mainland. Already uneasy because of the war for Catalina Island which, as near as anyone can tell, the Avalon Goblins won for the sake of the Goblin Gang as a whole, further false flag attacks by disguised terminators soon escalate things into a mainland turf war. The Iron Master quietly bows out while the two duke it out, drawing police heat and media attention away from him. The Family's feared Colombo Outfit and the vicious Goblin Gang Hobs soon develop a deadly rivalry. Sofia visibly relaxes the longer its been since she last had to take up her wings as Kestrel. She begins reintegrating into the main school population, but the blow to her popularity has been pretty severe. An attempt to get some old friends together to see a movie ends up with only Steve being willing to come. Steve doesn't mind the mild weirdness (after all, he is a robot built specifically to turn this girl evil) and comes anyway. The movie, however, is interrupted by an attack by the Hobs, who have apparently gone completely insane, finding and killing members of the Colombo Outfit while they go about their civilian lives, and killing or kidnapping a good number of bystanders in the process. The Iron Master can do little to intervene on behalf of Steve and Sofia, as his terminator squad is occupied raiding the local National Guard outpost with the help of the psychic villain Mesmer. The Hobs try to kidnap Sofia and for unknown and probably nefarious purposes, but it turns out she is a super hero. Despite this, the Hobs have numbers and assault rifles on their side and Kestrel is lacking support from Amp, who she rarely works without. She is nearly killed, but Steve takes a spray of bullets for her and she's able to defeat the Hobs, saving the theater and then leaving to help drive them out of Hollywood in general. The Avalon Goblins officially cut ties with the Goblin Gang and become the Avalon Guard. The Iron Master sends terminators disguised as paramedics in a stolen ambulance to retrieve him, but it's obvious that he is a machine. In the aftermath of the battle for Hollywood (ultimately won when supers and SWAT teams come pouring in to retaliate against what is essentially a massive terrorist attack), Steve comes to speak with Sofia, who is now suspicious of him, but she warms up and apologizes when he points out that he very deliberately saved her life at great risk to himself. Robot or not, he could've died and it certainly hurt a lot. Sofia admits she is Kestrel and takes him to her and Amp's secret hideout, a small, hidden room underneath an office building. There she reveals that she's connected the dots between the Villain or Vigilante? story and Steve's being a secret hacker-bot. She thinks Steve is the Iron Master and demands to know why he's trying to win her trust. Steve reveals the truth, that he's a creation of the Iron Master, and puts the actual Iron Master on the phone for Kestrel. Kestrel is narrowly persuaded not to tear Steve apart on the spot when the Iron Master says that Amp is planning on taking her wings, by force if necessary, in the near future. Kestrel does not believe him, but is spooked enough not to burn any bridges. She runs away from home and abandons her partnership with Amp, but remains on Team Blue (for now). ISSUE FOUR: WHILE THE IRON IS HOT The Steel Killer Nine Rollers are successfully subverted, and while the Iron Master begins advancing his plans for the rest of the Nine Rollers, EdenTech reveals the Swordsman Project. Not an urban warfare project for the Pentagon as was rumored, but a method by which it is possible to manufacture super heroes. Soon, every city will have dozens of super heroes...Hundreds, if they need them. The project will go into full production in just one month, so the super villain community nearly panics. Whisper organizes a coalition including the Iron Master, Daimyo Okata of the Ronin gang, Dead Eye, Bouncer, Mesmer, the Red Death, and Asrael. The Red Death refuses to work with Dead Eye and quits in disgust (Dead Eye speculates he, as a professional assassin, probably killed someone important to the Red Death at some point), while Asrael just never shows up. Probably for the best, as he is at least a little bit insane and not really Team Red or Team Blue. Ultimately the Iron Master convinces the others to go with his plan, in which Rica Rivera, Bouncer, and Dead Eye kidnap the mayor to create a distraction while Okata, Mesmer, and Julio Pedone will attack Eden Tower and destroy Project Swordsman. The distraction goes well, but after intense fighting between Okata's Ronin supported by some of the Iron Master's bots and EdenTech's own robotic defenders (nicknamed "iRobots" because they're built in the style of an Apple product), Okata's team is forced to retreat from the Tower, apprehended by Swordsman. It's at this time when the Iron Master is contacted by Chimera, who say that EdenTech and Swordsman will crush all crime under their heel after two-thirds of the city's villains are caught in the wake of the failed attack. Chimera demands a steep fee to intervene and prevent Los Angeles from falling completely to Team Blue, and the Iron Master and Okata agree to split the costs between them. Chimera uses a stealth aircraft, which will evidently have weapons capabilities at some point but is currently unarmed, to save Dead Eye and, incidentally, Rica Rivera, who were intercepted by Amp as they fled the scene of their fight with the SWAT teams and Behemoth who'd come to save the mayor. Amp threatens to kill Rica if she won't tell him where the Iron Master is, but Rica refuses to cooperate (never even admitting that she can't tell him because she doesn't know anyway). Amp ultimately fails to follow through on his threat, turning her over to the police instead, when Chimera arrives and retrieves her, treating the wounds she took in her battle with the SWAT teams. In order to distract Swordsman, Chimera drops a bomb on Compton, the first of many indications that the Iron Master has unwittingly struck a deal with the devil. When they arrive at Eden Tower, they funnel the Iron Master's hacking efforts towards projects most useful to them and least useful to him. The Iron Master, with no physical presence in the Tower, can only connect to the networks Chimera physically plugs their devices into and is thus helpless to stop this. He meanwhile contacts the Ronin and they ambush the prison convoy containing Okata, Mesmer, and Julio, whom Chimera decided not to resuce as they're "not our men, not our problem." When Chimera discovers a monster that was evidently once a lab volunteer in the labs of Project Connor, they gas it with chemical weapons from Project Bonfire, then set the whole place to blow. Swordsman is able to disarm the bomb in Project Bonfire in the hopes that it will prevent a chemical weapons disaster, but bombs in nearby labs cause a partial chemical release anyway. The Iron Master hacks local cell towers to warn the civilian population to evacuate immediately, saving thousands of lives. He then attempts to edit the data he stole for Chimera before sending it to them so that they won't be able to use it (especially the data on Project Bonfire, EdenTech's illegal chemical weapons division), but they see through the ruse, delete the data, and execute Rica Rivera. Convinced of her loyalty after her encounter with Amp, the Iron Master brings her back as a Deathless, disembodied spirit who can never truly die until her phylactery is destroyed. For her phylactery, the Iron Master chooses a spare robot part, because it's on hand, it doesn't look suspicious, and it's durable. She possesses a terminator and becomes the first member of the League of Immortals. ISSUE FIVE: DEATH FROM BELOW Though Swordsman himself is still a nuisance, Project Swordsman is permanently undone and the chemical weapons release is threatening to end EdenTech altogether. Kestrel shows up at a press conference called by Swordsman. Swordsman calls for her arrest, but the police refuse, because she's a hero (despite the fact that her suit, a prototype Swordsman suit, was pretty obviously stolen from EdenTech at some point). Kestrel mocks him for standing by EdenTech in light of recent events, and when Swordsman accuses her of working with the Iron Master, Kestrel says that after he saved thousands of lives by warning civilians of the imminent chemical attack, she'd rather be associated with him than "MurderTech." Swordsman demands that she leave, and Kestrel complies, but the damage has been done. Team Blue begins to factionalize between Swordsman, who has Amp, Behemoth, and the lazy and incompetent police commissioner Slemp on his side, and Kestrel, who finds she has accidentally become the figurehead for a faction of her own, with local super hero supreme Kronos giving her his support along with a number of police officers dissatisfied with Slemp, including lieutenant Elijah Guadian. Kestrel's faction believes that Chimera is the biggest threat to the city and concentrates their efforts on them, while Swordsman and his allies target the Iron Master. The Daily Courier comes out firmly in support of Kestrel's faction and begins openly advocating the Iron Master as a vigilante hero instead of a villain, while painting Swordsman as a secret villain using corporate power to buy up the media and masquerade as a hero. For now, however, the raids of Swordsman and his allies are little more than a nuisance, as they cannot find him. The Iron Master springs his trap on the Nine Rollers, and though there are repeated betrayals due to the Nines' seemingly bottomless supply of funds, the Iron Legion is ultimately victorious and overruns them, seizing Palos Verdes for themselves. During the battle, however, several members of the Iron Master's sets are abducted. Investigating with Rica (who can't really die anyway), he discovers that they, along with several of the Nine Rollers and some civilian bystanders, have been abducted by the creature from Project Connor, which somehow survived the Project Bonfire gassing, the bombs planted in the lab by Chimera, and being at very nearly ground zero for the much larger chemical weapons release caused by the bombs. The Iron Master uses his newly developed mechs, eight-foot autonomous super weapons loosely based off of some technology stolen from EdenTech, and hunts down the creature, dubbed Cancer, deep below the tunnels. Finally he manages to corner the thing with his forces and, though the battle is close due to its incredible healing abilities and thick carapace, a well-placed headshot finally ends the creature. Further investigation reveals that she was originally Jan Arnell, and was the victims of increasingly horrifying experimentation at the hands of EdenTech as she lost her humanity and her sanity. The Iron Master funnels this information to the Courier, who exposes it to the public, winning the paper more credibility and dealing some significant harm to Swordsman's faction. Swordsman renews his attack on the Iron Master, who makes dealing with the last of EdenTech his highest priority. ISSUE SIX: A SUNDERED SWORD The Iron Master makes an alliance with Daimyo Okata, who is eager for a rematch with Swordsman, and hires Strike, an assassin who typically works for the Family and Chimera. Behemoth believes the Cat, who is currently on a robbery spree in Rancho Palos Verdes, is working with the Iron Master, since her robberies coincided with the Iron Master's takeover and the subsequent collapse of the economy in order to encourage more illicit business and bring in more revenue for him. In truth, it's actually just a coincidence, but nonetheless Behemoth begins making trouble for the Iron Legion. When Behemoth and the Cat begin fighting in a construction site, the Iron Master arrives to ambush Behemoth, using his mechs to defeat him. He then calls in a multitude of terminators to establish a perimeter while waiting for Swordsman and Amp to arrive, keeping dozens more waiting in the abandoned subway tunnels formerly used by Cancer. Unfortunately he's not the only one who's had that idea, and Swordsman and Amp make their approach from below as well, Swordsman tearing through the terminators before arriving on the surface. Up top, SWAT teams come in ever-more vast numbers until the city's entire SWAT force has engaged the Iron Master's terminator army in a lethal conflict. Swordsman is aided by Kronos' time-reversal powers as the conflict consumes Harbor City and civilian casualties begin to rise. Swordsman carves through three mechs, defeats Okata again, and kills Strike, narrowly avoiding defeat multiple times thanks to Kronos. Kestrel arrives on the scene to pull the injured Amp away as the Iron Master's forces begin retreating from what is increasingly a losing battle. Swordsman, convinced that Kestrel is working for the Iron Master, attacks her, dragging her through the city to bait the Iron Master into following him. He sends Rica, possessing his last available mech, to chase after her. Swordsman and condemns the critically injured Kestrel, who believes his mind has been somehow altered by the serum to make him delusionally loyal to EdenTech (her other theory is that he might be a disguised Chimera agent, but saying that wouldn't be much help here) and pleads with him to think straight, but he ignores her. His plan to kill her is derailed, first by the appearance of what appears to be an EdenTech iRobot cobbled together from scrap metal, inaccurate, slow, and easily dispatched by an agitated Swordsman, and then by the arrival of Rica. She attacks Swordsman, but though he is badly injured, he is, in the end, far more powerful than an individual mech, and defeats Rica. After the mech is reduced to scrap, he takes her assault rifle and unloads a full magazine into the helpless Kestrel, slaughtering her. In the wake of the repeated terrorist attacks, bombings, and wars in the streets, Commissioner Slemp is sacked and replaced with Elijah Guadian. The Iron Master uses the Deathless power to bring back Kestrel, using a limited version of the Cancer serum to temporarily increase her body's healing capability. The effect wears off before her body mutates, leaving it vegetative until Sofia possesses it, essentially restoring her to life. The Iron Master sends some terminators on an expedition to Washington DC to nab Dr. Rud and Dr. Iveson, the heads of Project Connor and Project Bonfire respectively, in order to round out his roster and fill in the gaps in his scientific knowledge. Soon afterwards, Asrael would arrange to meet Swordsman in one of the Iron Master's secret mech factories, though whether this was an alliance or a trap and even whether Swordsman knew of the arrangement is unknown. What is known is that Asrael destroyed the factory without harming the crew, and then sped towards the battle between Swordsman and the Iron Master's new Sword Breaker mechs, built from the ground up to defeat Swordsman. They do so with minimal losses, and beat a quick retreat when Asrael approaches, destroying the mechs as he goes. He never reaches Swordsman and it is not known whether or not he intended to aid him or just prevent his suit from falling into the Iron Master's hands. Regardless, after stripping Swordsman of his suit and getting biological samples for examination by Drs. Rud and Iveson, Swordsman was turned over to the police. ACT II ISSUE SEVEN: BLOOD IN THE WATER The Iron Master sends his bots to discover the location of Chimera's stealth craft, then leaks the information to Kestrel, who leads a police raid on the warehouse where they're keeping it. Kestrel, using upgrades to her suit provided by the Iron Master, is able to track the cloaking craft (barely) and chases it down through the sky, attaching an explosive charge and blowing a chunk of its cloak off. The Air Force sends a pair of fighters into the sky, forcing the semi-cloaked craft down into the city where the fighters can't get a clear shot. Kestrel attaches more charges to the craft until she hits something important and the craft begins losing altitude. When it crash lands in Chimera's warehouse 17, Behemoth arrives to help Kestrel destroy the thing, with the police just behind. Chimera manages to remove something from the craft before its totalled remains are captured, but its unknown how important those pieces were. Kestrel drops off a weapon from Project Photon for the Iron Master to reverse-engineer, with a note that says "don't make me regret this." The Iron Master then begins plotting with Daimyo Okata of the Ronin to attack the Goblin Gang. His initial efforts at subversion win over the Nightmare Goblins, and then the Daimyo launches an attack, carving deep through Goblin forces to hit money-making sets and leaving them without many resources to respond with. Their efforts to rebuild are desperate and haphazard, and the Iron Master's follow-up attack destroys them almost completely. Their mysterious super villainous benefactor reveals himself when Joseph Lestrade, a vampire, attacks Rica while she leads the Iron Master's forces in the assault. Lestrade starts a super brawl with Rica, who ultimately wins using the new laser weapons from Project Photon. The Iron Master is then contacted through Whisper by Daniel Harker, a vampire hunter who's been tracing the clan of Carmille Lestrade, who he says is the real, longterm threat. On Harker's advice, the Iron Master and Daimyo Okata go looking underground for Carmille, the Iron Master's scouts discovering an underground manor. Vampires don't show up on camera, leaving the Iron Master's bots blind, so Harker and Okata deal with Carmille mostly alone while the bots fight her zombie hordes. Okata and Harker have Carmille cornered with some support from mechs (half-blind, but they can make a decent guess as to where Carmille is whenever she picks something up), until, badly wounded, she transforms into a massive bat creature. Carmille fights a close battle with the mechs, but after destroying the first one, she holds a decisive advantage with the remaining. Okata and Harker aren't easily able to keep up with Carmille's newfound incredible speed and power, but Okata shoves a piece of wood through her heart, staking her and reducing her to ash immediately. ISSUE EIGHT: RISE OF THE MACHINES While the Iron Master and Okata are distracted with the Goblins, their rivals, Chimera and the Santos Espada respectively, launch a devastating attack that sends both of them reeling. At the same time, the Family moves into the Goblins' former territory in Santa Monica, and the mysterious iRobot copies of the same sort first seen when Swordsman killed Kestrel begin popping up, more effective now and in larger numbers, working out of something called Omnus Base in the tunnels beneath Downtown. These rise up in Santa Monica as well, seizing some territory from the Iron Master and leaving the region as a free-for-all between four different factions. While Daimyo Okata struggles to push the interlopers out of Santa Monica with the financial backing of the Iron Master, the Iron Guard devotes its full attention to combatting Chimera. The battle is costly on both sides, and Chimera ultimately seizes Catalina Island, trapping the Iron Master in his (fortunately hidden) workshop. At the same time, Rica has kidnapped Malinda Chai, who had been speaking with Chimera, and apparently owed some debt to Strike and believes that the only way she can repay it now is to kill Swordsman, who is still imprisoned in the Catalina Towers (presumably there was a big show trial at some point). She had planned on using Chimera to get her in and out of the Towers, but is quite willing to work with the Iron Guard against Chimera if it will achieve her objectives. The Iron Master eventually manages to break Matthew Lagrange out of the Towers and give Chai her revenge, but by then he's already retaken Catalina Island and made peace with Chimera, as both Chimera and the Iron Guard have just about exhausted their resources fighting one another. The Iron Guard and the Ronin are able to destroy most of the iRobots in the tunnels, and then Rica and Kestrel storm Omnus Base, backed up by a mob of over 70 terminators and six mechs. Though the fighting is intense, the iRobots ultimately prove unable to overcome the power of the mechs. Omnus Base turns out to have been run by Dr. Dandurand and Dr. Span, confirming the Iron Master's suspicions, but the two of them have evacuated by the time he arrives. They're working on a power source that will allow them to power their machines far more easily, but right now it's costing more power than it's producing. The Iron Master seizes the delicious science and tries to track the scientists down, but with no luck. There's too many places to run in the sewer for him to search them all in time. ISSUE NINE: GRUDGE MATCH Having addressed his most pressing needs, the Iron Master returns his attention to the surface, patching up the holes in his powerbase that were opened up during his war with Chimera. He also defeats Tarot, who has begun making trouble for him, and has his deck of cards analyzed by a magical expert in Providence, Rhode Island, a contact of Whisper's. After analyzing the deck, he discovers that it's fueled by chaos magic, and that destroying a single card would render the entire deck useless (one way or another). Ultimately, the Iron Master decides to turn Tarot over to the Las Vegas hero White Mage, but the Magician arrives and snatches Tarot away, leaving his lovely assistant Magic Trick behind to stall. White Mage tells the Iron Master's mechs to go back to California, and he shrugs his shoulders and complies. Tarot is Las Vegas' problem now. Soon after, Amp receives an upgrdae from Omnus and begins menacing the Iron Master's sets in Palos Verdes, but a squad of mechs is able to bring him down. Rica (perhaps getting carried away) crushes one of Amp's sonic blaster gauntlets and breaks his wrist, threatening to destroy both gauntlets and completely depower him if he makes trouble for the Iron Master again. ISSUE TEN: RED AND WHITE The Iron Master later calls a meeting of a half-dozen super villains he's worked with before: The Red Death, Daimyo Okata, Mesmer, Antonio Columbo, aka the Made Man, a Family man who he'd given super powers to in exchange for their backing off of the Ronin during the fight for Santa Monica, the Cat. Chai crashes the party, and informs the Iron Master that Chimera has hired Dead Eye on Julio Pedone, but Dead Eye thinks the job came from the Family. While Julio attempts to flee to a safehouse in the Iron Master's territory, Dead Eye strikes, and Julio is saved only by the timely intervention of Jack and Lily, two people dressed in white. Lily, at least, also appears to have some sort of powers. They remove the mics from Julio before having a conversation with him. Julio reports a cryptic and mostly uneventful conversation, which makes Kestrel suspicious; why go through the trouble of removing mics when the conversation is impossible to understand anyway? With the help of Mesmer, the Iron Master discovers that Julio is indeed lying...That, or Asrael (who, due to the similarity in aesthetic and powers, is believed to be the one behind Lily and Jack's actions) has some method of interfering with Mesmer's powers. The Iron Master attempts to flush Doctors Span and Dandurand out of the tunnels beneath the city, but Chimera sets off an EMP, disabling his mechs. The Iron Master, flushed with new super powers and having possessed Swordsman's regenerated body using the Cancer serum and the Deathless power, heads off to fend Chimera off before they can capture the doctors or their tech. In the battle, the doctors' reactor is hit by a stray plasma bolt, and though the device is deactivated, it reacts violently, the entire neighborhood being incinerated in a blinding burst of light. Kestrel, knowing that there was a raid on the lab planned for that day and reassured that her father and his colleague would not be harmed, flies into a rage, but is pacified when the Iron Master attempts to use the ghost phone to contact the two of them and is unable to do so, indicating that they escaped the blast and are still alive, somewhere. Dead Eye makes further attempts on Julio's life, acting with an unusual level of preperation rather than just relying on his luck powers all the time, preparing escape routes in advance that allow him to escape an ambush from the Red Death and the Iron Master's mech kill squads yet again. The Iron Master cashes in his favor with the Cat, hoping to use her luck abilities to cancel out Dead Eye's, and then goes ahead with an invasion of Compton, and as part of this, Julio bribes several of the Stalkers. The Iron Master then sends a mech squad after Bouncer, who has escaped from the Towers under mysterious circumstances and decided to take over Compton after declaring himself leader of the Hounds. While there, Julio encounters Lily again, though this time without Jack. She hands him another spike, explaining that this one will help him in dire straits, and that he should only prick his finger with it when he is completely out of alternatives. Dead Eye then attacks and Lily pushes Julio out of the way, taking the bullet for him. The Red Death arrives a moment later to attack Dead Eye as well, but despite the Red Death's superior skill Dead Eye manages to get the upper hand thanks to his luck powers. The Cat does not arrive as planned, and cannot be reached by phone, so the Iron Master sends Rica to back them up. Asrael meanwhile attacks the mech squad sent to defeat Bouncer after they've already beaten the bruiser villain, and the mechs, specialized for a straightforward fight, are quickly laid waste by Asrael's ambush fire attacks. Asrael then heads to Lily, Dead Eye, and Red Death, ambushing Rica along the way and setting her on fire. Switching to a sidearm as his powers begin to run low, Asrael attacks Dead Eye and badly wounds him, then tosses Dead Eye's mosin-nagant to Red Death, offering to let him finish Dead Eye off. Asrael then extracts Julio's approximate whereabouts from the dying Lily and chases after him, while the Red Death finally exacts his revenge on Dead Eye. Chased by Asrael, Julio calls the Iron Master, hoping for some backup. The Iron Master contacts Amp, who has a grudge against Asrael since early 2008 when Asrael officially left Team Blue. Amp heads to Asrael's last known location and finds Red Death, and decides to chase him instead, as Asrael has left the area. During the chase, Amp is flung from his motorcycle and is too injured to continue. Kestrel has more luck tracking down Asrael, however, pinning him down with Stalker reinforcements. Julio tries to get away, but Asrael uses what little power he has left to first incinerate him with a bolt of white fire, and then teleport away, giving himself enough of a headstart to evade the Stalkers and Kestrel. In the aftermath, Julio and Rica's bodies are recovered and regenerated with Cancer serum, and Julio is made Deathless. Both of them are left with terrible burns, however, and Rica dons again her old mask, swearing that next time they meet, Asrael will be the one who walks away with scars. The Red Death burns a photograph of a bride and groom, his old identity Neil Cadden dying with Dead Eye, and taking a job with the Iron Master, fully embracing the persona of the Red Death. Kestrel, shaken by Asrael's mention of the civilian casualties that carelessly pile up in the wake of her super brawls, wonders if anyone in the city is really the "good guy." And Asrael himself waits for his next opportunity to advance his mysterious agenda. ACT III ISSUE ELEVEN: ARROWS OF BELLEROPHON The Iron Master mops up the remaining Hounds and finds the defeated Bouncer's terms for employment too nasty for the vaguely anti-villain schtick he's got going, so he ships Bouncer to Hong Kong instead. Then the entire city goes berserk as the gangs enter the end-game. The Ronin and Santos Espada go to blows and Chimera attacks, their stealth craft returning to bomb the Iron Master's hideouts in Avalon. Meanwhile, in the middle of Catalina Island, a meteor falls. Upon investigation, the Iron Master discovers that it is no meteor, but an artificial sphere with multiple antennae attached. The terminators sent to recover it have a communications blackout for about five seconds after making contact with the thing, no data as to what happened during those five seconds, but otherwise appear to be unharmed. After melting the terminators down to avoid any infection of the network (if at all possible), the Iron Master possesses a hobo to examine the craft further. One of the antennae comes to life, punching its way into the Iron Master's bloodstream, so he leaves his host. The now un-possessed hobo begins speaking to the alien creature, but the Iron Master cannot hear the alien's side of the conversation until it puppets one of the Iron Master's lab assistants to speak through him. The alien is called Eidelos, and is a hivemind collective from a world destroyed by an unknown assailant that appears to be similar to those that destroyed the home of the only other alien currently known to humanity, the super hero New Paragon. It requests host bodies to allow itself to rebuild and eventually travel offworld, and in return offers to help Earth against the alien attackers, which Eidelos refers to as the Other, having too little information on them to determine another name by which they might be called. While the Iron Master searches for a large supply of apes and other primates that will serve as good hosts for Eidelos (being capable of using human tools but non-sentient), Rica Rivera leads his elite sets against Chimera, dealing a death blow to the organization. On its way out, however, they deploy a number of four-legged walker-mechs, which deal significant damage to the Iron Guard before the United States Air Force destroys them with tank buster missiles. Chimera retreats from the city, while Team Blue discusses bringing down martial law and calling in the National Guard in the wake of Chimera's open warfare with the Iron Guard. The Iron Master has Whisper organize a meeting with a Santos Espada representative named Morales, Daimyo Okata, the Made Man, and Julio in a stolen body, but Asrael bombs the meeting, killing all those inside (though Julio is just able to go back to his original body). Whisper sends reports of falling under attack from mechanized minions, and when the Red Death goes to investigate, he finds Tory, another member of Jack's organization, and Asrael, who nearly kills the Red Death and later Amp before fleeing. The Iron Master is still able to broker a peace between the gangs, but is forced to cede his territory in Santa Monica and Compton to get them to agree, making up for his losses by taking Chimera's old territory in Long Beach. Asrael, meanwhile, calls a meeting with Team Blue, who cautiously agree to meet him in Exposition Park. Category:Story